Lone woman death row inmate Christa Pike says shes at peace ahead of execution as Tennessee gov. denies last-ditch bid for clemency
The first woman sentenced to death in Tennessee in 200 years said she is “at peace” before her rare execution — as the state’s governor declined to get involved in her last-ditch bid for clemency.“Whether my clemency is granted or not, I am at peace,” convicted murderer Christa Pike wrote in a letter to NBC News before learning that Tennessee Gov.
Bill Lee would not grant the condemned killer clemency.“I am not afraid to die,” the killer wrote to the outlet.“I’m only nervous about the process.”Pike, 50, is slated to be executed on Wednesday by lethal injection, the first time the state will put a woman to death in more than two centuries.
She was just 18 when she lured fellow Job Corps student Colleen Slemmer, 19, to an isolated spot on the University of Tennessee campus in Knoxville and tortured her to death in a jealous rage with the help of her boyfriend on Jan.12, 1995.Pike’s attorneys have asked the Supreme Court to halt the execution, citing her struggles with post-traumatic stress disorder and the possible “severe mental suffering and superadded psychological terror” from being strapped to a gurney to receive the lethal injection, the outlet reported.
Her lawyers have claimed that Pike’s horrific childhood trauma involving sexual and physical abuse, neglect, and domestic violence was never addressed by the institutions and adults she depended on — or considered when the jury was deliberating the death penalty.She’s also requested an all-female lethal injection team to carry out her execution, claiming she could be traumatized by having men involved in her final moments.Tennessee corrections officials have said they would try to fulfill some of the killer’s requests, including using female guards to move her from prison in Nashville to a nearby maximum-security institution within a day of her execution, NBC reported.They may also grant her request for an all-female execution team.Pike — who was one of the youngest wome...